State of Being...

Currently in New Orleans for the next week(ish).
Piggybacking wireless Internet off of my wife's laptop, thanks to the weird way the hotel is set up.
Have eaten at Mother's (mmmm, po'boy...) and Melting Pot (mmmm, fondue).

Now soliciting suggestions for places to go and places to eat and things to see.
We're staying a few blocks away from the French Quarter, and just off of St. Charles Street.
The city is our oyster, and the people have been very friendly so far.

Let the suggesting begin. My first time here, and I want to pack in some experiences while I can. We'll be here for the first weekend of Mardi Gras, and the parades go right past our hotel. :>

By the Way...

Robert Aspirin has a new urban fantasy series coming out starting in April, with the first book being DRAGON'S WILD. I won't go into detail at the moment, except to say that much of it seems to be a love letter to the French Quarter. And it's one of his best books in years. :> I'm working on a review which will go into more depth as to why I liked the book. But damn, does it make a probably somewhat idealized version of the French Quarter come alive...

New Orleans, Day Two

So today we hit the French Quarter and wandered around. We went to the Gumbo Shop for lunch, where I tried a lovely chicken gumbo and blackened catfish nuggets, and finished up by having real absinthe for the first time in my life. Mmmm, absinthe. The Green Fairy.

Then we wandered around, I got my Tarot done by a psychic reader in the back of a voodoo shop, and we had beignets and hot chocolate at the Cafe du Monde, where the guardian pigeons watched over us. We paid a robot cowboy to perform for us, paid homage to the local pride of feral cats in the park, and had burgers for dinner at Yo Momma's, a bar and grill thatis made of win. (And apparently a regular stop for Robert Aspirin... the bartender knew him well.)

Afterwards, we wandered back down Bourbon Street, where I soaked up the atmosphere: the neon, the music, the shills, the early drunken revelers, and so forth. Mary laughed as I tried to convince her to hit some of the various establishments. We listened to jazz outside the Cafe Beignet, and then made an early night of things so we don't wear ourselves out before the parades start tomorrow.

I'm loving it...